


Rootless

by misura



Category: The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Gen, Nobody is Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-09-07 12:12:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8800402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: In which mistakes are made and reunions are postponed.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plumedy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/gifts).



> freeform tag to mean: Bod is dead, but not _dead_ dead, so I didn't feel this required a Major Character Death warning

When Bod discovered he had been buried in the wrong graveyard, he was less than pleased.

In vain, Mr Jeremias Stiller (1963-2017, Beloved Husband) pointed out the many charms of New Willowbrook Graveyard. Neither the perfectly maintained flower pads, nor the freshly painted gate had the least effect on Bod's insistence on feeling that he had been done an irreparable wrong.

"This is not where I belong," he told Miss Juniper Jones (1970-2008, Our Dear Daughter) who had once harbored the modest and eminently achievable dream of becoming a school teacher.

"Well, it's no use crying over spilled milk," she said cheerfully. In her life, Miss Juniper had done everything cheerfully, up to and including dying in a motorcycle accident.

(Her funeral, on the other hand, had rather upset her. There had been altogether too many people crying or blowing their nose and pretending they were simply suffering from a cold.)

"You don't understand. Someone made a mistake," Bod insisted. "I need to talk to ... " And here he hesitated, because he realized that he did not know whom he needed to talk to in order to right this intolerable situation. "I need to talk to Silas," he said at last. Silas would be able to fix things, he thought.

"They'll come visit, I'm sure," Miss Juniper said, who had no idea who Silas was, but would have been quite cheerful to meet him. "Soon."

"How can he, when he doesn't even know where I am?" Bod asked sullenly.

Miss Juniper had no cheerful answer to that. Also, although Bod was a great deal older than she had imagined her pupils to be, she sensed that he would much prefer to be left alone, rather than be cheered up. Reasoning that he was, in living years at least, old enough to be her grandfather, she decided that it was not her job to tell him that there was no point in getting all worked up about something when there was nothing you could do about it.

 

For the next two weeks, Bod sulked.

New Willowbrook being a modern graveyard, there were no tombs, but there were trees and so he would sit under one of them and think about all that had gone wrong.

It was a short list, really. Bod had lived a long life, but while he had certainly made mistakes, he had always tried to learn from them and move on. There were very few things he had done that he wished he had not, and even fewer things he had not done that he wished he had.

Had it not been for the fact that he was stuck in a graveyard that was not his, he might have been perfectly content. Sooner or later, usually just when he was about to decide that things were not so bad and that he had no real right to complain, he would remember that New Willowbrook was not where he belonged, and his bad mood would return.

By rights, when Silas appeared, Bod should have been delighted.

It was hard to shake off his sulkiness all at once, though, so rather than telling Silas how happy he was to see him again, what Bod said was, "Well, so you're finally here."

"Yes," said Silas. He had not changed at all.

Until then, it had not occurred to Bod that he himself had most definitely changed. When he'd left the graveyard, he'd been a young man, barely an adult.

"I - I'm sorry," Bod said. His sulkiness was deserting him, like rats leaving a ship they knew was going to sink, except that in this case, they left simply because they knew that they would no longer be welcome. Silas would not tolerate sulking. "I never - I wanted to visit."

"There was no need," said Silas. "As I told you, I do not get into trouble."

Bod had gotten into trouble quite a lot, during his life. Generally speaking, he had thought it rather fun.

"I think I just forgot you, for a while. Did you do that?"

Silas's expression did not change. "No."

"Oh." Bod frowned. "I think I forgot everyone. But then, when I was dying, I remembered again."

Professional poker players would have been driven to despair by Silas's face. "I expect you did."

"I thought - I wanted to dance the Macabray again," said Bod. "I told myself that I'd come back home for that. But I never did."

"You were busy. Living is like that," Silas said. "It takes up a lot of your time, and your attention, even if you don't always notice it."

"I got to ride the Grey." Bod smiled. "The Lady was very nice to me, even though I didn't remember her at first, either."

A smoothly polished rock would have looked expressive, put next to Silas. "You are happy, then?"

"Well, no. I want to go home," Bod said. "Can you take me there?"

Silas did not breathe. Likewise, he did not sigh. Still, there was a slight shift in the way he held himself. A long time ago (by his standards, at least) Bod would have known what that shift signified.

"Bod. You are no longer alive. Things are not as simple as you seem to think."

"What do you mean?" Bod asked. "I don't belong here. I don't know anyone here."

"You could get to know them," Silas said. "If you made an effort. They're like you."

"No, they aren't," said Bod. "And anyway, if you've only come here to tell me you can't help me, then why did you even bother coming at all? You could've just sent a postcard."

"I came because I am your guardian," Silas said. "I made a promise. If you wish me to leave, I shall do so."

Silas did not mention that it might be difficult for him to stay at a graveyard where there were no tombs, nor little chapels nobody ever went to visit, where one might hide things that one would prefer to remain unfound by the living.

Bod had not quite considered these things before, when he had only been thinking of how Silas would surely be able to fix things. He considered them now, though, and he wondered if perhaps Silas had really only come to visit, with no intention of staying longer, or of taking Bod with him as he left.

"If you want to leave, it's not as I can stop you, is it?" he said.

"No," said Silas.

Bod said nothing after that, although it did not feel quite right to leave things there. He wanted to ask Silas why he had not come sooner, and how he had found Bod at all, and why something like Bod going home should be such a complicated thing.

 

The dead at New Willowbrook did not quite know what to make of Silas. They instinctively felt that he was not one of them, and it was obvious that he was not one of the living, either.

They knew words for people like Silas, but there were many ideas attached to these words, and most of them, if not all, did not fit Silas.

Besides, as Miss Juniper cheerfully pointed out, even if they had happened on the right word, what good would that do them? It wasn't as if they might ask their living relatives to bring along some garlic rather than roses, the next time they came to visit.

Silas, for his part, was polite. He politely greeted people, when he met them; he politely introduced himself and, on the rare occasion when one of them stuck around long enough to have a conversation with him, he politely inquired about their past lives and current interests.

 

"You don't need to stay on my account, you know," Bod said.

In truth, Bod wanted nothing more than for Silas to stay, but he had wholly convinced himself that Silas would not, and there seemed no point in putting off the moment of Silas's departure.

"There are things that I have set in motion," said Silas. "They would be better served by my remaining here for some time yet."

"You went back home, didn't you? Did things go all right there?"

"Things went as well as could be expected," said Silas. "There was no trouble or, at least, none that was beyond my capacity to handle."

Bod tried to imagine the kind of trouble that would be beyond Silas's capacity to handle. "I thought you said that you didn't get into any trouble at all."

"What is trouble to one person is a minor nuisance to another."

"So are you going to tell me where it is, now that I'm dead?" Bod asked. "I mean, it's not as if I can go and show up there by surprise and make a mess of things, is it?"

"I was more concerned about things making a mess of you," said Silas. "Which may happen yet. You seem to have been becoming a bit more social."

On the one hand, Bod wanted to know where Silas's home was. He still had his memories of when he had been alive, and he had read about a great many places.

On the other hand, he wanted to show to Silas that he had listened when Silas had told him, more or less, that there was nothing he could do for Bod, and that Bod would simply have to make the best of it. Who knew? In another two centuries or so, there might be many interesting people to talk to in New Willowbrook, and if Bod were to be among the oldest, well, perhaps that would not be so bad.

"I loved to talk to people when I was alive," he said. "They always had interesting stories to tell, even if they didn't always knew it themselves."

Silas, Bod thought, probably had more interesting stories than anyone else, alive or dead.

"I expect you have some stories of your own as well," said Silas.

"Some, yes," Bod agreed. "Would you like to hear one of them?"

For a moment, he thought that Silas would say 'yes'. Instead, Silas said, "Perhaps later," and left.

 

As a rule, New Willowbrook was a quiet, peaceful place.

Thus, when it was discovered that an Administrative Error had been made, it was decided that the matter would be dealt with with a minimum of fuss. The local newspaper was discretely invited to come take a picture, if they insisted (they did not, as the local football team was playing that day and nobody wanted to read about dead people anyway) but otherwise, no one was told who did not need to know.

It was an odd business, of course. Still, whichever way you looked at it, it wasn't a particularly interesting kind of odd that other people would want to know about. Not something you'd tell people about at parties to demonstrate that your job wasn't nearly as boring as they seemed to think it was.

This was the kind of odd it was best to take care of quietly and peacefully, and then forget about completely.

And so that was exactly what people did. At least the living.

 

The dead, of course, were a different story altogether.

"I never," said Mistress Owens. "Is our Bod really going to be all right like that?"

Mr Owens shrugged. He was excited, but reluctant to show it. "If Silas believes so, I guess it's fine."

"I expect it may be a while before they come here." Mistress Owens looked around as if wondering where she might best start to straighten things up a bit. "Oh, but can you imagine it? Our little boy, all grown up. Why, I hear he lived to be nearly a hundred."

Mr Owens had not lived to quite such a biblical age. It sounded like a very long time to him. He was not sure that he would have liked to remain the head of the cabinet-maker's guild until he would have been a hundred. "Silas said they might get here next week."

"That soon?"

"Just a quick visit," said Mr Owens. "I hear they're planning on going to Africa next, or perhaps it was Asia. Quite a long way."

"I never," said Mistress Owens, again.

Mr Owens thought to himself that shortly, many people might be saying the same, only with a slightly different meaning to it. As for himself, he was quite content to have never been to Africa, nor to ever go there now that he was dead, but he could all too well imagine others feeling slightly different on the matter.

Still, that would be Silas's problem to deal with, and Mr Owens had no doubt that he would be equal to it.


End file.
